en English Southwest One: Lessons and New Agenda for Public Services in the South West European Services Strategy Unit : News and events : 2008 :Southwest One: Lessons and New Agenda for Public Services in the South West Somerset County Council and Taunton Deane District Council signed a £400m Strategic Service-delivery Partnership contract with IBM in September 2007. The Joint Venture Company, Southwest One, is the first SSP to have a framework agreement to enable other local authorities and public bodies to obtain services bypassing the procurement process. It is also the first to potentially include a Police Authority as a partner (Avon and Somerset Police Authority negotiating to join the partnership) and the first to combine secondment with a 10-year assurance to staff in the founding authorities. This report exposes the unprecedented use of commercial confidentiality in the procurement process, identifies effective ways for UNISON to respond to the new agenda and ensure a good industrial relations framework in Southwest One. It also proposes regional and national public policy changes to improve the accountability and transparency of options appraisal and procurement processes. Dexter Whitfield, mail@centre-public.org.uk European Services Strategy Unit, Duagh, Camp, Tralee, County Kerry, Ireland. IBM procurement commissioning democratic accountability shared services PPP SSP marketisation public interest freedom of information commercial confidentiality secondment of staff staff secondment framework agreement IBM Mouchel Parkman HBS contract culture contract governance contract management community engagement impact assessment Dexter Whitfield scrutiny failure democratic defiicit joint venture company options appraisal Trade UnionsGovernment BodiesCommunity Organisations 2008 XHTML™ 1.0 The Extensible HyperText Markup Language (Second Edition) Level Double-A Conformance to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 Cascading Style Sheets, level 2 Copyright © 1998-2008 European Services Strategy Unit text/html HTML 2008-01-24T15:53:56Z Created 2008-02-04T12:45:35Z Modified